Protest organizers were gearing up for a fresh day of demonstrations against the government’s judicial overhaul Thursday, with dozens of large gatherings expected to draw as many as half a million people to the streets in major cities, on highways and outside of coalition members’ homes.
Overnight, a group of reservists unveiled banners on the statue of Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, at the entrance to the coastal city of Herzliya.
The banners, a play on Herzl’s famous phrase, read, “If you will it, democracy will win” and “It’s not a dream, it’s a revolution.”
The reservists from the “Brothers in Arms” group then turned their attention to Shas leader Aryeh Deri, gathering outside his Jerusalem home. Deri, a key ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is the subject of a Knesset bill to allow him to return to his ministerial posts, after the High Court of Justice ruled his position in the cabinet was unreasonable in the extreme due to a recent criminal conviction.
A second group of military reservists gathered at the Ramat Gan home of Education Minister Yoav Kisch, a former air force pilot. With a banner reading “Don’t abandon democracy,” a man in full flight gear hung from the side of a tree entangled in a parachute, as a representation of an abandoned pilot.
Among other locations, protests were planned for the ultra-Orthodox Tel Aviv suburb of Bnei Brak, home to several coalition Knesset members, sparking fears that the demonstrations could ignite friction with locals, many of whom back the coalition parties pushing the controversial judicial legislation.
לשתק הכל !!!
הרצליה, יום שיתוק לאומי, התחלנו !
צאו לרחובות ????
אחיות לנשק
צילום: גיתי פלטי pic.twitter.com/p9OI5xhzY6
— מהפך ישראלי (@MahapachIsraeli) March 23, 2023
Billed as a “national day of paralysis,” protests will seek to disrupt traffic on major highways around Ben Gurion Airport in anticipation of Netanyahu’s trip to London, the third straight Thursday in which they are seeking to torpedo the premier’s plans for a weekend in Europe.
Protesters are also planning to demonstrate outside a convention held at the nearby Airport City business park set to be attended by Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter and Economy Minister Nir Barkat.
There were also reported plans to disturb public transportation.
Protesters will also hold various rallies throughout the morning and early afternoon at major intersections, highway interchanges, university campuses and elsewhere, including in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
Police fear that there will be more protests to secure than in past weeks, with some 500,000 people predicted to participate, stretching law enforcement resources, Channel 12 news reported.
While police have seemingly attempted to minimize friction with protesters, they have come under intense pressure from National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir to more readily use force to clear roads and clamp down on the rallies.
According to the channel, police were worried that organizers would try to shake the cops by giving them false information about where protests were planned.
Israelis have held nearly three months of mass demonstrations, with the largest rallies generally occurring on Thursdays and Saturday nights, to raise opposition to the government’s judicial overhaul plans.
On Wednesday, they gathered outside the Knesset and at conferences attended by lawmakers as well as some of their homes.
As it stands, the legislative package will allow the Knesset to override court decisions with the barest majority, preemptively shield laws from judicial oversight, and put the selection of judges in the hands of coalition politicians.
Coalition lawmakers are seeking to have at least part of the overhaul passed into law by the time the Knesset breaks for Passover early next month.
While supporters say the judicial overhaul will rebalance power away from an overly activist court, critics argue the moves will remove essential checks on executive and legislative power, putting democracy in peril.
The main rally Thursday, scheduled for 7 p.m., was expected to depart from Ayalon Mall in the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Gan, to Bnei Brak, an ultra-Orthodox bastion and one of the few locations where the overhaul is thought to have near-unanimous support.
Haredi leaders urged residents to not be goaded into confrontations with the demonstrators on Wednesday.
“Don’t come to confront them and don’t play into their hands, it’s forbidden,” senior UTJ politician and Bnei Brak resident Moshe Gafni said in comments published by the Walla news site. He also asked what city residents had done to invite the protests.
In a statement, organizers said that Haredi politicians had been “at the forefront of the coup no less than [Constitution Committee Chairman MK Simcha] Rothman and [Justice Minister Yariv] Levin,” referring to two of the overhaul’s main architects.
“It seems that after years of maintaining the status quo, the Haredi leadership has declared war on us, the liberal public. So we’ll mass tomorrow in Bnei Brak, home to much of the Haredi leadership, to say ‘this is where it stops,'” the statement added.
Last week, protesters from the army’s reserve corps held a smaller demonstration in Bnei Brak, opening an ersatz “draft office” in the center of the city.
Ultra-Orthodox politicians are widely thought to back putting shackles on the court in order to pass a law exempting members of the community from military service that cannot be stricken down.
At a rally outside Gafni’s house on March 14, scuffles broke out between protesters and locals, some of whom launched eggs, glass bottles and firecrackers at the demonstrators.
Earlier in the day, protesters plan to set up “dialogue booths” on the border of Bnei Brak and Ramat Gan for medical professionals to hold conversations about working for a living with local residents, “in the spirit of Maimonides,” the 12th-century Jewish sage embraced by secular and religious Israelis alike.
Ahead of the day of demonstrations, several academic institutions said they plan to allow their students to protest without consequences or declared that classes will not take place on Thursday.
In Kfar Saba, Beit Berl College announced classes would not be held, Jerusalem’s Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design said discussion circles would be run in place of classes, and the Technion in Haifa said that the institution would close for three hours.
Tel Aviv University will not suspend classes but its Faculty of Social Sciences said it would allow lecturers to do as they please. The Ben Gurion University of the Negev will not close at all, but has encouraged faculty and students to participate in protests.
Reichman University in Herzliya announced that classes will run normally, but due to expected transportation disruptions, will not take attendance. Rupin College and the Seminar Hakibbutzim said they would allow lecturers to strike if they wish. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem has yet to announce a decision on the matter.
According to the Haaretz daily on Tuesday, Education Minister Kisch told a meeting of the Council of Higher Education that he was disappointed to see “institutions insisting on getting involved and bringing political views into academics in a one-sided way, and thereby harming the institutions they lead and academia as a whole.”
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